1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to mowers and in particular to a combination mower and trimmer apparatus for simultaneously cutting and trimming vegetation along or around an obstacle.
2. Description of the Relevant Art
A variety of different types of mowing devices have been devised for meeting the requirements of particular mowing applications. For example, both powered and unpowered lawn mowers are available. Also available are lawn mowers that are designed to be ridden and are commonly referred to as "riding mowers". Other types of mowers can be pushed or guided by operators walking behind them. Unpowered, walk-behind type lawn mowers are propelled by people walking behind them; powered, walk-behind type lawn mowers can either be self-propelled or propelled by people walking behind them.
A common type of walk-behind lawn mower includes a wheeled body mounting a prime mover (e.g. a gasoline engine or an electric motor) which drives a blade assembly with a generally horizontal blade spinning below the body lower surface about a generally vertical rotational axis. A handle generally extends rearwardly from the body on this type of lawn mower for grasping by an operator walking behind it. The handle can include engine throttle controls, a safety clutch mechanism and similar types of controls
This type of lawn mower is quite popular and is useful for many lawnmowing operations. However, a limitation with this type of lawn mower is that many of them are designed in such a way that they cannot approach solid, vertical objects (e.g. walls, trees, fences, etc.) very closely. Thus, uncut strips of vegetation are generally left adjacent to various obstacles after a lawn is mowed with such a conventional mower.
The adjacent strip remains uncut because, with many conventional mowers, the overall mower width is slightly greater than the cutting swath width whereby the mower cannot get close enough to an obstacle to mow all of the vegetation adjacent to it. Thus, a second, trimming operation is often required to effectively remove the resulting uncut strip of vegetation.
Trimming can be done with hand tools such as clippers, shears, etc., or with various powered devices, such as edgers, flexible line vegetation trimmers, etc. Flexible line vegetation trimmers are commonly used for such vegetation trimming operations adjacent to obstructions such as trees, buildings, poles, fences, etc. Thus, a popular lawn care procedure is to first mow an area with the lawn mower and then trim the remaining vegetation in hard-to-reach areas with a flexible line vegetation trimmer. Although the equipment for such a two-part procedure is available, the procedure involves a substantial duplication of effort since a lawn maintenance worker must guide both types of equipment over substantially the same areas adjacent to buildings and other vertical structures.
Even if a lawn mower were designed with a blade arc wider than any other part of the lawn mower, it would have limited usefulness since the rapidly whirling blade could significantly damage a structure that it came into contact with. The tips of the exposed blade could also be dangerous to persons and things that are exposed to them, and might shatter upon engagement with a hard object whereby broken blade parts could be dangerously propelled from the mower.
An important advantage of flexible line trimmers is that the flexible line generally does not seriously harm trees, buildings, and other structures when it is used for trimming adjacent vegetation. Furthermore, flexible line trimmers can be made compact enough for use in relatively small spaces which might be inaccessible to normal mowers. However, flexible line trimmers generally have considerably narrower cutting swaths than mowers, whereby the latter are generally preferred for mowing large areas. Thus, each type of vegetation cutting equipment has its own unique advantages and applications; and both types of equipment are often employed for particular lawn maintenance projects.
Heretofore, equipment has been proposed which combines some of the advantages of blade-type mowers with flexible line trimmers. For example, the Comer U.S. Pat. No. 4,374,465 shows a mowing device with lengths of flexible line attached to and extending outwardly from the blades. However, heretofore, there has not been available a mower which includes both blade and flexible line cutting systems which also includes the advantages and features of the present invention.